A Holy Place

I took this on vacation in 2014.
Mikve Israel Emanuel Synagogue
Willemstad Curacao
dedicated 1732

After my resounding success and subsequent good feelings from my little sermon at Temple last week, I decided I might like to try it again. So I asked Marlene (sermon scheduler and all around ritual guru) if I might get on the schedule again. But this time, I asked for the specific Torah portion I would like to tackle.

We had a general Congregational meeting last January and I was astounded that there was so much push back on the idea of hiring a Rabbi for our growing 750 member Temple. Apparently the prospect of spending an additional $40 or $50 a person each YEAR caused a tremendous among of angst.  If you believed the nay sayers, this would cause an undue financial burden on many of our retirees (who by the way never seem to skimp at the golf courses, restaurants or cruise lines). 

So I asked for this particular Parsha which Marlene tells me will be our topic on February 12, 2016.  I have already written my commentary and I hope it may inspire a few folks to reconsider their priorities, if only just a little bit.

Here it is:

We recently received a bill for our Temple dues for our upcoming third year of membership. And because we are still relatively new to the Villages and Temple Shalom, the bill included the third of five easy payments for the Building Fund.

 

This week’s Parsha tells of the very first Building Fund.  It’s called “Contributions for the Sanctuary” and it goes like this:

 

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me.  And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, goats' hair, tanned rams' skins, goatskins, fine wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones, and stones for setting for the priestly garments and for the breastpiece. And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 

 

Debbie Friedman, the beloved genius of modern Jewish music, wrote a haunting ballad about this Torah portion.  Here are some of her words:

 

These are the gifts that we bring

      that we may build a holy place.

 This is the spirit that we bring

      that we may build a holy place.

 

These are the colors of our dreams

     we bring to make a holy place.

 This is the weaving of our lives

     we bring to make a holy place.

These are the prayers that we bring
    that we may make a holy place.
These are the visions that we seek
    that we may build this holy place.

Whenever we travel to faraway places with strange sounding names, or even just to a small nearby town, what do we see that excites us the most?  Opulent churches? Quaint shopping districts? Gourmet restaurants?

 

For me, it’s seeing a very old building with a humble Star of David above its door.  For there, in what might be the most unlikely of places, a group of Jews came together, pooled their perhaps meager resources, and with love and devotion, built a holy place to call their own.  In the poorest of towns and under the harshest of circumstances, our ancestors built shuls, supported a learned teacher or rabbi, and procured a Torah.

 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if hundreds or even thousands of years from now, a wandering Jew found Temple Shalom and thought – here, in this improbable place, in Oxford Florida, surrounded by a hundred churches, a group of Jews  wrote checks to the Building Fund and built a spiritual home, a holy place, and filled it with beauty and friendship and light?

 

Shabbat Shalom!

Who knows? Perhaps we will have a Rabbi at Temple Shalom by next February and my little sermon will just remain here...